Dr. Peter Butt, an addictions consultant with the Saskatoon Health Region and associate professor in the department of Family Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, says provincial coverage of two drugs to treat alcohol use disorder is a game changer. Liam Richards / Saskatoon StarPhoenix

In light of the staggering social and health costs associated with booze, Dr. Peter Butt welcomes news that two drugs to treat alcohol use disorder are now covered by the province’s drug plan.

“We’re known for high levels of impaired driving, we’re known for high levels of hospitalization (related to alcohol), we’re known for challenges with our alcohol culture,” said Butt, an addictions consultant with the Saskatoon Health Region and associate professor in the department of Family Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

On July 1, the Saskatchewan Prescription Drug Plan started covering naltrexone and acamprosate to help people struggling with alcohol.

“This is extremely significant,” Butt said. “It can be a game changer.”

The social costs of alcohol are “arguably more than what we have from opiods,” he said.

“When it comes to alcoholism, we’ve become somewhat inured to it,” Butt said. “If this was something new and fresh, I think we’d see the sort of response we’re seeing around fentanyl. People would say, ‘This is not right. Something needs to be done.’ ”

The medications have been around for some time — naltrexone came out in the 1980s, — but they haven’t been used extensively, primarily, because they weren’t covered by the Saskatchewan Prescription Drug Plan.

“It creates a wonderful opportunity for family physicians to be able to intervene and treat alcohol use disorder early on before it becomes more severe,” Butt said.

Naltrexone reduces alcohol cravings and acamprosate helps people who have quit drinking maintain their abstinence. Both drugs are used as part of an alcohol counselling program.

“With any substance use disorder, an important part of it is helping people put together a life worth living without using,” Butt said. “Sometimes that requires addressing core issues if there’s been trauma or abuse in their early childhood or adolescence. Sometimes there may be mental health problems of anxiety or depression that is occurring with the substance use. Sometimes it’s about putting a life back together in terms of basic life skills and job skills so they can move on.”

Rehabilitation services, in combination with drug therapy, can reinforce abstinence, he said.

“It’s challenging for people to just turn off the switch and change their behaviour,” Butt said.

In the Saskatoon Health Region, naltrexone was provided to a patient who was frequently at the emergency room and Detox because of alcohol issues.

“With naltrexone, he was able to get enough sober time to start making some of the changes that he needed to make in his life and to get going again,” Butt said. “It’s about getting momentum with regards to recovery.”

In 2015-16, there were more than 30,000 admissions to addictions services in the province.

Dr. Mohamed Eisa, a consultant psychiatrist with the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region and section head of the inpatient psychiatry program, agrees it is significant the two medications are now covered by the drug plan.

Some patients with limited finances went without the drugs, he noted.

And detoxification isn’t enough, Eisa added.

“This is a very chronic illness and it requires ongoing psychotherapy and counselling to ensure those clients don’t relapse again,” he said.

When he trained in England a number of years ago, the National Health Service covered the cost of the medications as part of relapse prevention.

“This was a big deficiency, so we’re glad that the government is now accepting that these clients should be covered,” Eisa said.

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